Pneumatic pressure control based on improved NMPC and its application to aeroengine surge simulation

In the semi-physical simulation of aeroengines, using the pneumatic pressure servo control technology to provide realistic pneumatic excitation to the sensors and electronic controller can improve the confidence of the simulation and reduce the test cost and risk. However, the existing methods could not satisfy the precise simulation of large-amplitude and high-frequency pulsating pressure during aeroengine surge. In this paper, a pneumatic pressure control system with asymmetric groups of the High-Speed on–off Valve (HSV) is designed, and an Improved Nonlinear Model Predictive Control (INMPC) method is proposed. First, the volumetric flow characteristics of HSV are tested and analyzed with Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) signal input. Then, a simplified HSV model with the volume flow characteristic correction is developed. Based on these, an integrated model for the whole system is further established and used as the prediction model in INMPC. To improve the computational speed of the rolling optimization process, the mapping scheme from control signal to PWM duty cycle of HSVs and the objective function with exterior penalty function are designed. Finally, the random step, sinusoidal and real engine surge data are set as the reference pressure in multiple comparative experiments to verify the effectiveness of the pressure tracking system.